Monday, January 4, 2016

While the Kurds are facing the Islamic State (IS) in
northern Iraq they are dealing with their own deep political divisions. The
Peshmerga facing the insurgents are divided along partisan lines with
politicians and members of the two ruling families the Barzanis and Talabanis
controlling the units. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) have also taken shots at each other in their respective
media outlets about how they are doing in the war. To help explain these
differences is Wladimir van Wilgenburg a freelance journalist and analyst at
the Jamestown Foundation, who recently contributed to a recent Carnegie paper
on Kurdistan’s
political armies as part of a project on civil-military relations in the
region. He can be followed on Twitter at @vvanwilgenburg.

1. Officially there
is a Peshmerga Ministry and several unified Peshmerga Brigades that have both
KDP and PUK fighters, but the majority of units are actually under political
control. Not only that but the front with the Islamic State is divided up along
partisan lines and under command of various political and family figures from
the two ruling parties. Can you explain how Ninewa, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces
are split up between the KDP and PUK, and who some of the commanders are and
their affiliations?

The Kurdish areas were divided into two territorial zones of party influence: one ‘green’ zone (Suleymaniya province)
controlled by the PUK, and one ‘yellow’ zone (Erbil and Duhok provinces)
controlled by the KDP as a result of the Kurdish civil war (1994-1998) and
power sharing agreements between the PUK and KDP. Following the US-led overthrow
of Saddam in 2003, Talabani’s PUK Peshmergas played a role in Kirkuk, while
Barzani’s KDP forces played a role in Mosul in coordination with the US. The
1,050-kilometer front line between the Islamic state and the Kurds is divided
into eight sectors after IS attacked the Kurds in the summer of 2014:four under the control of the PUK including
Diyala and Kirkuk close to the Iranian border and bordering Shia militias, and
four under the control to the KDP including Ninewa close to the Syrian and Turkish
border. Therefore, Baghdad needs
the KDP and it’s leader Masoud Barzani for future operations in Mosul. This
while the PUK initially cooperated with Shia militias to secure areas around
Diyala (and parts of Kirkuk and Saladin province). An exception is the sector
of Dibiz controlled by KDP-member and former parliament speaker Kemal
Kirkuki in the Kirkuk region.

One of most famous KDP Peshmerga commanders is Barzani’s nephew Sirwan Barzani,
known as the black
tiger in Kurdish from his days in the mountains. He is the owner of the
biggest telecommunications company Korek, and sector commander of the black
tiger forces for the frontline in Makhmour and Gwer. One of the most famous PUK
commanders is Mahmud
Sangawi, who commands the Jawlala sector, and was accused of playing a role
in the death of a journalist but cleared by the courts. Family members of the
Barzani and Talabani family also play an important function in the security
forces, such as within the PUK’s Counter Terror Group
(CTG) run by the cousins of Jalal Talabani, the two brothers Lahur and Polat and Talabani’s son Bafel Talabani, while Barzani’s
son Mansour Barzani plays a major role as a special forces commander in the
frontlines around Zummar and Mosul dam, and his other son Masrour Barzani heads
the KRG’s security council.

2. One reason why the
Kurdish forces have never unified is the historical rivalry between the KDP and
PUK. How has that kept the Peshmerga, Asayesh and other intelligence agencies
divided?

Officially, the Ministry of Peshmerga controls 14
unified brigades of roughly 40,000 Peshmerga personnel.But around 120,000 Peshmergas remained
outside the control of the Ministry of Peshmerga (MoP), and instead under the
control of the political parties (the PUK’s 70th Brigade, and KDP’s
80th Brigade). Furthermore, more importantly even the unified
Peshmerga brigades are influenced by the parties that dominate certain sectors.
Therefore the sectors closer to the Iranian border are influenced by PUK
politics, while the sectors closer to the Syrian and Turkish borders such as
the frontlines around Ninewah are influenced by KDP politics. In addition, the
KDP and PUK run their own intelligence and internal security police forces
(Asayish), that compete in cities like Kirkuk, and Sinjar (PUK is close to the
PKK there). The speech of CTG head Lahur Talabani in Washington further exposed
these divisions, saying that both KDP and PUK intelligence agencies never meet,
and accusing the KDP of carrying out the Hawija raids without his
knowledge. Technically speaking the CTG falls under the KRG Security Council
led by Masrour Barzani, but in reality Masrour and Lahur never work with each
other.

3. In the last
Kurdish elections the Gorran/Change list became the second largest party
disturbing the power sharing agreement between the KDP and PUK that had split
the government administration 50-50 between them. Because of Gorran’s success at
the ballot box it was given the Peshmerga Ministry. What have they been pushing
for with the Peshmerga and have they been successful?

The main campaign slogan of Gorran was Change.
They wanted to reform the political system and stop the parties from using the
security forces as part of the clientelistic system. Owing to its stellar
performance in the Kurdish elections, the Change list was given the portfolio
of Peshmerga affairs in 2014. The Peshmerga Minister Mustafa Sayid Qadir’s goal
was to attempt to unify more Peshmerga brigades under the Ministry of
Peshmerga, and to decrease the influence of political parties by attempting to
delink the parties from giving salaries to Peshmergas directly. For instance,
he stopped parties influencing the distribution of weapons delivered by the
West. However, the war against the Islamic state and the political crisis in
the KRG over Barzani’s presidency made it more difficult for Gorran to make
reforms. In October, four of Gorran’s
ministers were
removed from the cabinet by the KDP after Gorran and KDP failed
to reach a consensus last August if Barzani should stay as president or not.
Now Gorran’s Peshmerga
Minister, and his advisor Saeed Kakei, are no longer part of the Ministry of
Peshmerga Ministry.

4. Finally, you
recently wrote that there is little chance that the KDP and PUK will give up
their control of their military units. Why don’t you think there will be much
change, and how will that affect the political development of the Kurdistan
region?

The distrust between the KDP and PUK are too high. This
distrust extends to the foreign relations of each party with the KDP being
close to Turkey, and the PUK closer to Iran and Baghdad.The current highly volatile political situation and war
does not improve the trust between the parties with the KDP growing even closer
to Turkey. The KDP works with Turkey to train Sunni forces in Bashiqa, which is
now opposed by Iran and Baghdad. The KDP only has a better working relationship
with former Peshmerga Minister Jafar Mustafa Ali, who heads the PUK Peshmerga
forces. So far the distrust has not hampered the war against the Islamic State
much due to the division of the territorial frontlines into KDP and PUK zones,
apart from in special operations and intelligence sharing. Furthermore, the
dominant role the PUK plays in the frontlines with Shia militias prevents the tensions from escalating in the areas around Diyala, Saladin and
Kirkuk due to PUK’s good ties to Iran and Baghdad, while the dominant role the KDP
plays in Sinjar results in more tensions between the Peshmerga and PKK forces,
which delayed operations. However, the KDP’s closer ties to Turkey could
hamper cooperation between Baghdad and the Kurds over Mosul, due to the fact
Turkey wants to play a role in the ‘liberation’ of Mosul.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com